Make the animal the same size as you. This will let you wear the same armor and use the same weapons in your hybrid form.

This is based on faulty rules interpretation. Lycanthropes use the Alternate Form rules for their shape-changing, which explicity say:

Quote

If the creature changes size, any gear it wears or carries that can be worn or carried in its new form changes size to match the new size.

It is mentioned several times in the guide that you should choose an animal form the same size as your base form, but I couldn't disagree more, really. Natural reach is a huge advantage, and only gets better if you add a reach weapon. So this stuff should really be removed from the guide. Maybe it was based on the 3.0 rules or something? Or early 3.5, before errata? I don't know. Whatever the reason, it is bad advice based on an erroneous rules assumption.

And as far as animal hit dice, while yes it is generally in your best interest to minimize them, if the DM will allow you to advance them according to the animal's stat block, there can be a huge advantage to doing so. For example, going from 3 to 4 hit dice on a dire badger gets you [urlhttp://www.d20srd.org/srd/improvingMonsters.htm#sizeIncreases=]a size increase[/url] and doesn't cost you a point of BAB. This translates into +8 strength, +4 con, and +2 natural armor at the cost of -2 dex and -1 attack/AC. So it is well worth it. I am not sure if it is RAW-legal, though.

« Last Edit: December 19, 2011, 09:13:44 PM by phaedrusxy »

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I don't pee messages into the snow often , but when I do , it's in Cyrillic with Fake Viagra. Stay frosty my friends.

I've finally gotten off my lazy ass and looked this up for myself. The official MM errata completely replaces the sentence in the MM that talks about how gear isn't affected, and it also added that gear is affected in the Alternate Form ability in general. D20srd.org has the right of it, the original information was incorrect due to errata.

Additionally: "The creature loses the natural weapons, natural armor, and movement modes of its original form, as well as any extraordinary special attacks of its original form not derived from class levels (such as the barbarian's rage class feature)." The natural armor isn't a problem since the Lycanthropy template specifically overrides that, but the extraordinary special attacks section is something to remember.

Just wanted to call out that this means that other templates on the lycanthrope (feral was a spectacular one) are now pretty much useless.

Perhaps we could create a list of the best animals for lycanthropy and why they are the best (or would that belong in a separate thread?). So far I've got the nifern (poison that paralyzes your opponent, blindsight, great stats, and only 2hd).

In the feats section you may want to add the poison feats from savage species and serpent kingdoms. Deadly spittle in particular is an awesome feat for a nifern because it allows you to spray your spit in a 15-foot cone-shaped burst.

The issue is that the hybrid form doesn't get poison because that's a special attack.

That's what black blood hunter is for .

True, but I don't want to put in feats that first require five levels of a campaign specific prestige class to use effectively.

If you want to make an analysis of what animals are best feel free, I'll even make a link to it in my guide. However, the guide is for more general feat/item/whatever advice that all lycanthropes qualify for rather than specific builds.